


Love Play

by artifactstorageroom3_archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, F/M, Het, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-03
Updated: 2009-05-03
Packaged: 2019-06-13 03:16:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artifactstorageroom3_archivist/pseuds/artifactstorageroom3_archivist
Summary: Blair realizes he’s in love with Jim during a college play.





	Love Play

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Elaine, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Artifact Storage Room 3](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Artifact_Storage_Room_3) and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Artifact Storage Room 3’s collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/artifactstorageroom3/profile).
> 
> **Author's notes:**
> 
>  

  
Author's notes:

Notes: For those of you who haven’t seen _Fiddler on the Roof_ and don’t mind if the plot is spoiled for you…

  
 Tevye and Golde are a couple who had their marriage arranged for them by the village yenta. They admit that they love each other in the process of trying to marry off their daughters. Lazar Wolf is a man who makes a bid to marry their eldest. His offer is accepted only to be rejected when the girl’s lover asks her father for her hand in marriage.

I do not own in any part _The Sentinel_ or _Fiddler on the Roof_. The efforts below are not for profit. 

* * *

You know, I’ve done some crazy things in my life, and most of them revolve around one Detective James Ellison. I’ve jumped in front of a garbage truck. I’ve jumped out of a plane. I’ve jumped off of a cliff. I’ve hauled my recently dead ass out of a hospital bed so I could convalesce while trying to sleep on a church pew in a foreign country. And oh yeah, I was in that hospital bed because I came back from the dead for Jim.

So you could say that I’m invested in him. No really. I can see the skepticism there. Okay, okay maybe I’m manically obsessed. Maybe I’m like a stalker of Jim or a cult member. Heh, I should start a religion, “The Holy Followers of Ellison.” Or maybe that should be hairy…

Anyway, you could say that I’m attached to him more than an average friend would be. I think that Simon would take a bullet for Jim, but I’m pretty sure that he’d just stab Jim in the nuts if he started making out with Simon’s killer.

Not me though. Nope. Why? Because I understand Jim. That isn’t to say that I understand what was driving Jim to play tonsil hockey with Alex, but I do understand that Jim didn’t know either. It wasn’t his choice to do that. I know that. Jim has worse taste in women than I do, but once he realizes that they’re criminals, he does the right thing. See? I understand Jim, and I know that kissing Alex Barnes on that beach will bug him for years, or until he represses the memory.

Do you know that is actually one of my fears? All people have them, the irrational little buggers that pop up. Mine used to only be a fear of heights. Now I have this strange fear that Jim is going to start suppressing my existence. That I’ll come home one day, and find him staring at my stuff wondering where it all came from because he’ll have forgotten that he’s got a live-in anthropologist.

It’s crazy. Trust me on this. I’ve added a psychology minor to my education repertoire. I have a piece of paper stating that I know normal from nuts. Of course, I can’t tell you what kind of nuts. Well, I could, but I don’t have the diploma to prove that. I’d have to have my bachelor’s to have proof of my being able to distinguish what type of bonkers I am.

It is kind of funny though. I’ve had proof for ages that I’ve got some serious attachment issues involving Jim, and I didn’t get it. Best friends my ass, so much for my vaunted education. Apparently living with Jim has allowed me to pick up his bad habits. Namely the denial one. 

I used to be this guy that was so in touch with his feelings. I knew me. I talked to me. I meditated. I kept a journal that wasn’t primarily filled with anecdotal information about Jim, oh, pardon me, about sentinels.

You know, that right there should’ve given me a clue. It was like the equivalent of being a high school girl doodling “Susie loves Jack” in her diary.

So my journal has this nice faux leather finish and doesn’t have a cheap lock on it. So what? The principle is the same. 

But no, I was in serious denial. Maybe it was the whole guy thing. I’m not a homophobe. I’m so far from a homophobe that I think some openly gay gays are more homophobic than I am. But when it comes down to it…

Okay let us talk about the Blair Sandburg of post-pubescence for a minute. He could not get laid if he paid a hooker to do it. Seriously, I’m not joking. My cousin, the bookie, found out about my still intact virginity at one point and hired this, ummm, lovely lady to help me overcome my chronic attachment to my left hand.

I was too scared to perform. Actually, I still have that problem. Some guys, okay lots of guys, tend to react to intense adrenaline rushes by having erections. It is completely normal, and sometimes they take care of that problem by having sex. Not me. No sir. I’m lucky to see little Blair poke his head out within three days of a near miss. 

Now before you get all sorry for me, or disbelieving, let me assure you that I did indeed lose my virginity and am able to have perfectly normal sexual interactions. I was twenty-one when it happened. She was eighteen, and I lied about being a senior. Hey, she was a physical education major. There was no way that she was going to wander over to the social sciences building and find out that I was the resident freaky genius. All she knew was that I was hyper and had pretty eyes. 

Come to think of it, I should really send her a thank you note. Once I found out that women liked the eyes, I managed to woo over several of the ladies with them. Oh, they say that women like the good looking ones, but take it from a guy who is fairly handsome; women don’t bed you unless you give them a reason other than being ‘drool worthy.’ Mine were my eyes back in the day. Eyes, as they say, are the windows to the soul. ‘They’ lie. ‘They’ are nerds and jocks who share the same scary trait of not being able to form sentences that will get them laid. 

So that was young Blair and women in a nutshell. It took me years to get laid, and even now I still have to resort to little white lies to score. Pretty doesn’t fuck the bulldog. Ugh, forget I said that, bad mental image there.

Now take Jim Ellison. He is gorgeous and articulate, never met a mirror that didn’t love him. Have you seen that magazine cover from when he came out of Peru? Covered in sweat and jungle filth, and he still looked like a model. I can tell you that I’ve never walked out of an expedition looking that good, and I packed amenities for the trip.

Jim doesn’t need to resort to come hither eyes for sex. If he finds a woman that for some reason doesn’t want him, all he has to do is smile. Now, I’ve got a nice smile. I’m not lying here, but my smile makes people happy. It makes them feel good. I inspire joy with my smile. Jim inspires sex. If I were a better man, I’d be happy that I’m inspiring a better universe with my infectious charm. But, I’m not a better man, and I want Jim’s smile focused on me, and I want it in-THAT-way. 

So really, what chance do I have? Jim is Mr. Sex (should he ever decide to nab him some), and I have absolutely no clue with what to do with another man’s dick. What? You thought I was going to go around experimenting with guys when it took me so long to get girls? Get real. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. And that particular specimen of bird is usually a lot more interested in a bush. 

Yeah, that was vulgar. I’d apologize, but I’m angst here. I have a right.

See, I didn’t know I was in love with Jim. Thought I’d forgotten about that did you? Hah! You have no such luck.

I went to this play at Rainier. Yes, it was sponsored from the theatre department. When you teach at a school, you still have to play office politics the same as any other job. At colleges and universities this translates into going to boring guest lectures, watching sports games that make your eyes bleed, and buying tickets to see either the choir or the theatre productions.  Normally I can get off with only attending one or two of these events. It is a perk of not being a fulltime professor.

Apparently dying on the front lawn of the campus translates into me kissing more ass. You’d think it would be the other way around. I mean, where the hell was campus security? But no, my drowning in the fountain caused some campus safety statistic to go up, and now I’m left with major disaster control. Like an almost drowning put them over the top. I mean, I was there for the dead body on the lawn that actually stayed dead. I didn’t break that little rating all by myself.

Normally I’d drag Jim to these events, and I’m wishing that I would have tonight. If Jim had been with me, I wouldn’t have had my epiphany. No, really, I’m telling the truth here. We’d have slouched down in the back and made sarcastic comments to each other. 

But, I didn’t nag Jim into coming with me. I didn’t have the heart to do it. I mean, it was a musical. Do you have any idea how bad musicals can be when some of the actors are just there because it fulfills their arts credits? I did not want to subject a cranky sentinel to sharp voices.

For the record, I was merciful on the world and took interpretive poetry. It was a night class, and the teacher was stoned. He claimed it helped him help the students ‘create beauty.’ Whatever, I grew up with Naomi. The dear professor was hardly the first ‘responsible adult’ that I’d seen drugged up.

 Rainier’s fine arts department had decided to slaughter _Fiddler on the Roof_ this semester, and mercifully it was actually not bad. I was entertaining thoughts of dragging Jim to see the next showing. (Hey, attending an artistic performance twice earns you mega brownie points.) 

Just when I decided to table my internal debate on how to convince Jim to go to the show, they swing into “Do You Love Me” up on the stage. As I’m sitting there watching Tevye ask his wife of twenty-five years the title question, I start thinking about my relationship with Jim. Now, I know that we don’t have a bunch of unwed daughters, and we’re nowhere near a Jewish couple whose marriage was arranged. Still Golde’s responses just sort of turned the light bulb on in the attic I like to call my brain.

 It wasn’t a pleasant enlightenment. The mice and spiders went scurrying for shelter, and I wanted to curl under my seat. I was not prepared for this, this insidious slow kind of love. I had a plan, Stan. I learned from the mistress of detachment. I knew how to send frost onto the rosy bloom of love, and I’d perfected that art after Maya almost took a chunk out of me. 

Don’t get me wrong. Love is great. Love makes the world go round and all that, but love and Blair Sandburg?  I’m not the kind of person anybody would want to commit to. Look at me; I’m a know-it-all, hippie who hasn’t ever had an example of a stable relationship. It took one scary trip to Peru for me to realize why Jim would be so upset about me taking off to go to Borneo. I mean, I ‘got’ it before. I just didn’t ‘get’ it. 

Is that the type of person you’d want to chain yourself to, the guy that has to almost die to understand the concept of friendship?

Yeah, I thought so. 

But, you know, I had just come to the realization that it was way too late. My defenses had been built against the whole passionate type of falling in love. I’m a passionate guy. If I was going to go, it would be somebody I felt passionate about.  The fates, as I speak, are laughing their blind asses off.

Sure I felt passion about Jim. He was my sentinel. But this love thing, man it just crept in. It was like those little plants that grow in sidewalk cracks. You don’t realize that they’re there until one day you turn around and there’s this little maple tree growing. And hey, you think to yourself, I’ll just pull it up. But you can’t because that plant might be small, but it’s still a tree. All that pavement works against you because tree roots are gnarly old things that spread out, and you can’t force them through a little crack in the sidewalk. Trust me on this one. Jim spent a lot of time and money cutting that maple tree down and spraying weed killer on it.

Me? I don’t have the guts for the chopping and the weed killer. I’m not the type of guy who can take a look at a life and say, “You don’t belong here. I’m going to go grab the weed killer.” I just can’t do it. Not when the little guy is just trying to survive you know? And damn if that wasn’t just like what my love felt like for Jim, this little plant trying to make it in this little slice of earth that it had found in my urbanized heart.

I know that’s sappy. What do you want from me? I just spent my evening watching art majors pretend to be actors, I mean, Jewish residents of Anatevka.

So I figure it’s there, and it isn’t going to go away, so I might as well let it grow. If you’re not going to give something a mercy killing, you might as well feed it instead of making it starve.

So what if I don’t know what to do with Jim’s muscles? So what if I have no idea what to do with another penis taking up residence in my bed? I’m a smart guy. I can figure this out. 

I drag myself home and give myself a little pep talk. I can’t put off the admission of love. It wouldn’t’ be a good idea. Jim will figure it out anyway. My karma is like that. Better he hear it from me first. I mean, he’s got to love me too right? Men like Ellison don’t  keep men like me around just because. 

By the time I reach home, I’m pumped up. All the signs point to Jim loving me, and I love him. And, by the way, wow. Being in love is freaking awesome. My heart is pounding, and I’m pretty sure I could replace the lights in the hallway should we have a sudden power outage.

I pop in the door and see Jim guiltily jerking away from a tall blonde. He’s got lipstick on his mouth, and his short hair is a little mussed. 

I think that my filament just burned out.

How could I forget that Jim’s been seeing Maureen for the past three weeks? 

I smile and make a vague gesture with my hands to indicate that I’m just going to head straight into my little room.

Fuck. Fuck. Fu… okay well you get the picture. 

I guess the fates are chuckling more than I thought they were. I thought I was Golde, turns out I’m Lazar Wolf. 


End file.
